15 Steps for Creating a Webinar That Generates Interest and Sales

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Webinar hosting services have made it easy for businesses and entrepreneurs to engage with audiences on a worldwide scale.

No more booking expensive flights. No more staying in hotels. All you need is a stable internet connection and a chatroom full of people, who are eager to buy the next big product or service.

Webinars have definitely changed the way hosts engage with their audience. However, the process of creating an engaging presentation that sells has remained the same. From focusing on your target audience, to developing a sales pitch and a compelling call-to-action – there’s a lot of planning that goes on behind the scenes.

Here are some helpful tips to transform your webinar into a money-making machine for your business:

 

1.      Choose the Right Format

Your format will determine how your present your ideas and sales pitch.

Many successful webinars have been hosted by a single presenter, who carries the entire seminar through to the end. This is the easiest format to prepare for, since you’re accountable for everything that happens during the event.

If you’re planning on hosting an interview or panel discussion, you need to structure the dialogue carefully and give everyone equal time to contribute. But with more than one person leading the conversation, these webinars give audiences a different viewpoint on various topics.

Choose the format that suits the idea you’re selling and the topic being discussed.

 

2.      Make an Enticing Offer

In a webinar, you have a very short timeframe to grab the audience’s attention.

Take this opportunity to make an offer that’s simply too good for people to refuse. Add urgency to your offer to entice audience members. Whether it’s a limited time offer, upcoming price increase or bonus offer that’s going to expire – give your audience a reason to act NOW.

 

3.      Anticipate Rejection

Whether it’s the door-to-door salesmen or car dealer, when you’re being ‘sold to’ – you probably have a bunch of reasons to not make that purchase today.

“It’s too expensive… I don’t need this right now… I don’t trust this person”. These are the kinds of objections your webinar attendees will have during your sales pitch. Take the time to consider why people may not want to purchase from you. Overcome these objections by making adjustments to your sales pitch, including:

 

·         Instil trust by having more testimonials

·         Provide more statistics or evidence as proof of your claims

·         Adjust the price of your product or service if it’s too expensive

·         Make a more compelling call-to-action

 

4.      Structure Your Sales Funnel

Behind the content of your webinar lies a well-structured sales funnel.

How will you present your sales pitch to people? At the start of the presentation or near the end? Decide how you want to present yourself and figure out which one will generate the biggest conversion rates. This may require some trial-and-error or doing some market research on your behalf.

 

5.      Create Good Content

Make it clear what your webinar is about and describe the outcomes you want to achieve. You can do this by summarising the event in a single sentence or paragraph – just like an elevator pitch.

Are you sharing some free content to promote your webinar?

Make the content so enticing, so irresistible, that people will want to sign-up for the paid content. After all, if the quality of the free content is good – people will more likely believe the paid content is even better, which it obviously should be!

 

6.      Use Testimonials

Sharing testimonials with the audience is an effective way to build trust and confidence in potential buyers.

Choose testimonials that reflect the wants, needs and desires of your audience. This way, your audience can relate to their concerns and marvel at the results they achieved by purchasing your product or service.

 

7.      Make a Smooth Transition From Content to the Sales Pitch 

A good webinar has the right blend of helpful or informative content, along with an effective pitch that leads to sales. Structure your presentation in a manner that seamlessly blends the two elements together.

You can do this in a number of ways, including:

 

·         Ask questions that your audience will want the answer to

·         Maintain the curiosity of your audience with an enticing offer

·         Make the content justify the sales pitch – a solution to a particular problem

 

8.      Entice the Audience With a Memorable Hook

Getting the attention of your audience is crucial. But how do you divert all the attention towards you? Use a great hook or tagline to introduce your webinar. This may tackle through the clutter of distractions and generate interest in people.

Make a contradictory statement. Introduce an idea or concept that’s newsworthy. Ask a poignant question. Do whatever it takes to get the attention of your audience. Just make sure the hook is relevant to the content of your presentation!

 

9.      Be the Expert

One way to build trust is to present yourself as an expert in your field.

We’ve already talked about how effective testimonials are in building trust. However, you can also use facts, statistics and evidence of success to demonstrate the results of your product or service.

By backing up your claims with cold hard facts, you have a better chance at invalidating people’s objections and producing a sale.

 

10.  Structure the Dynamics of Your Presentation

Will you start your presentation with a short, punchy sales pitch? Or tell a story about your past successes and where it has led you today?

There are no rules on how you structure the flow of your webinar. However, you should map out a logical progression of ideas that lead towards the sales pitch. You can also determine the length of each topic, their order of appearance and choose the right testimonials for certain sections.

 

11.  Make Your Audience Say ‘Yes’

Ask someone to purchase a car upfront and they’ll probably say ‘no.’ Ask them if they want to take an obligation-free test drive… and you might get a resounding ‘yes.’

Try this same logic on your audience members. Start small by asking for commitments that require very little effort or sacrifice on their part. This can be as simple as agreeing with a particular statement or opinion you’ve shared. From there, you can work your way up to bigger commitments… before leading to the final sales push.

 

12.  Write Your Script

Once you’ve got a solid plan on the structure of your webinar, it’s time to write everything down.

Writing the script gives you a mental map of everything your talk will cover. From testimonial placement to sales pitch, introduction to results and transitions – write everything down.

Will your sales pitch be more effective after this testimonial? When should you address the audiences concerns? Memorise the content and experiment with different formats until you reach a solution that has a logical progression.

 

13.  Prepare Visuals

Visuals are a useful backdrop that guides the audience through the webinar. Prepare slides that summarise the content of each section and lead audiences onto the next topic. If your presentation has more than one speaker, have a slide that clearly shows each person’s name, job title and organization.

You can also use slides to display graphs, statistics and data.

 

14.  Promote Your Webinar

Want to get the biggest return on your time and effort? You need to start promoting your event a few weeks in advance to generate interest early and reach your desired numbers.

Your promotional material should clearly explain what the webinar is about, and who will benefit from attending the event. If your event is for particularly tech-savvy people – make sure this is stated clearly in the material!

Other ways you can promote your webinar include:

 

·         Sharing information on social media: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

·         Writing a blog post on your business website

·         Promote the event to your email newsletter subscribers

·         Advertise your event in relevant industry publications

 

15.  Assess Your Own Webinar

For most people who host their first webinar, and even for experienced presenters – your first presentation will never be perfect.

Take this opportunity to reflect on your performance and the results from your audience. What sections of the webinar excited them? Where did they get lost, confused or bored? How can you restructure the content to make the presentation flow more easily?

Thankfully, you’ll have many opportunities to refine and improve the quality of your webinar. By fine-tuning the content and sales pitch of you presentation, you’ll gradually become more confident and ‘clued-in’ on strategies that generate the biggest returns.

Posted 19 July, 2017

shannon89

Remote Freelance Copywriter

Hello! My name is Shannon Jackson-Barnes. I am a remote freelance copywriter from Melbourne, Australia. Since 2015 I have been writing for businesses, big and small, local and international, that operate in a broad range of industries, from Building & Construction to Automotive to Information Technology to Hospitality to Education to Workplace Relations, and too many to all name here. With exper...

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